Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Sinn Féin motion. I commend Deputy Cullinane on bringing it forward. We have recruitment and retention challenges across our health service, and this Government, like previous ones, has not done enough to address them. The motion states that there is a widely held belief among the public that the current Minister is incapable of addressing the crisis in our health service and, along with the wider Government, has been making the situation worse. That statement is true.

It is truer of the delivery of services at Our Lady's Hospital, Navan, County Meath, than anywhere else. Government policy, as stated in the small hospitals framework document of 2013, is to close the Navan accident and emergency department and to downgrade the hospital to a model 2 hospital. The Minister has been made aware repeatedly of concerns about the safety of critically ill, unstable patients presenting at the Navan accident and emergency department. To state them clearly, however, those safety concerns are directly related to a chronic under-resourcing of acute and emergency services at Navan. For years staff were not recruited and not retained. Acute and emergency services were allowed by design to drift into a situation of precarity. Given the population of Meath, given the demand for emergency services in Meath from the people of Meath, given the physical distance to the next nearest emergency department, and given the state of overcrowding in those same emergency departments, there are no spare beds, no spare trolleys and no spare chairs. Adults are left waiting in the back of an ambulance, in a car park. Sick children have it even worse. They are sent out with their parents to wait in the car. It is not a situation that should be allowed to proceed.

Incredibly, despite the protestations of clinicians working on the front line - the repeated protestations of 17 consultants, to be exact - tomorrow morning a bypass protocol will be introduced at Navan and will mark the next step in the diminution of services at Navan and a step closer to the closure of the accident and emergency department there. What of those protestations? Will they say, as the motion states, that this Minister's approach and that of the Government will make matters worse? They state clearly and repeatedly that the Government's proposals and the HSE's plan will lead to worse clinical outcomes and will put lives at risk. They point to the HSE's track record in the region: repeated promises but failure to deliver. They point specifically to a bypass protocol and the fact that there are still no full-time consultants in neurology, stroke or rheumatology. As a result, the experience of the health professionals in our region, at both Navan and Drogheda hospitals, is a negative one of repeated promises but changes implemented without the necessary staffing, capacity or additional resources for our health services.

The plan for Navan hospital must be one of investment and bringing it to a standard to ensure it is safe for the people of County Meath. The county has a population of in excess of 220,000 people. We know a review has been on the Minister's desk for two months at this stage. We have been very critical of its terms of reference, as the Minister knows well, but it is completely unacceptable to transfer risk from one hospital to another. Investment must be made to ensure that services are safe at Drogheda and Navan hospitals. That is the plan that must be presented and introduced. Anything other than that is a failure in my opinion.

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